(in Dutch) ‘Springlevend’ (2022)

Het is een boek dat ik zelf graag als kind had willen hebben.

”Het boek laat je nadenken over heel belangrijke zaken, complimenten!”
Patty Grannetia, Huisarts Amsterdam

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(ENG) Why wait ? (2020)

Why wait?

Kindness is highly underrated. It can be as powerful, if not even more so, than physical strength, anger, or force. Real kindness, empty of fears and anger towards others, can rescue many hearts, and can take us directly to the truth. It can be a torch bringing light to the darkest corners. And it’s not special or rare, it’s our true nature. Our true home. We can postpone it, not believe it exists or feel unworthy of it, but life will give us challenges - sickness, pain, people we love who die - and it’s in those moments that our true nature will save us and bring us back home and at peace and give the opportunity to others to do the same. Without that we will experience the biggest fears, the most pain and despair and probably create more for ourselves and others.

Sometimes I daydream about other eras, when there weren’t a climate crisis or a crazy virus etc. But let’s not let the state of today become a reason to be negative, and distance ourselves even more from our true nature. Let these things become a reason, an urgency, a chance even, to actually get closer to it! To flip the coin and wake up to our true nature. Because the world and planet desperately needs us to!

Believing in our true nature, is not idealizing humanity or the world we live in. Living in the now doesn’t mean denying the future.
It means not pointing out what is wrong with people or the system, but pointing out what is ‘good’ in ourselves and other people.
Living in the now is being brave enough to see reality and beyond, and surrender to it; which means detaching from the little persona that we have built and believe ourselves to be.

To embrace this might feel like believing in Santa Claus. It sounds too good to be true so it can’t be. And of course the fear... what if I believe and then not receive any gifts or love? It will be too painful so I’d rather not go there. It’s impossible to not receive it, it’s already there for you to enjoy. It’s in and around you.

Are we ready to surrender to it? It has always been a possibility. Forgetting for a moment about our pride and becoming our true beautiful selves. Going past even these words. If we don’t want to go home yet our mind will not link any value to these words, or will create reasons why not to do so. If we want to become truly free it’s the heart not the head who will read and respond. It is always possible to ignore it. To bury it deep down under layers. But it will never leave us, it never has. It’s unbreakable and therefore the strongest, most infinite force. Not the one we think of or see in movies or success stories, but the one that is already there, without us having to do anything to gain it. It was there before you were born and it will still be there after you die.

If I would die today
I would tell the world how much I love them
I would not be afraid
I would not hold myself back
I would love
I would become my true self
I would be at peace
But I’m not dying today
Am I ready to live like that already

Why wait ?

Paris, 2020

 

(ENG) Poem ‘Love is free’ (2019)

I look at the birds and I wonder,
I look at the trees and I wonder,

Do the birds also have monkey minds or are they totally free as I imagine them to be?

Are the trees just like us but they have found their deepest roots and with that a new form that we call tree?

Are they softly communicating at night and kindly giggling about the restless hearts and energies that walked around them that day?

I wonder if I could join them and listen carefully without saying a word. Just learn about their roots and how to put mine deep into the ground, so that I don’t get blown away by the wind.

Even the birds master the wind as they choose their course, flying but knowing, and the trees rooted but free as their branches touch the sky.

The two must have some kind of love between them. The trees that are always there as a home for the birds. Reaching their arms into the sky, letting them rest on their branches any time they get tired or need a home.

I pray that all love can be as free and generous, just co existing and supporting each other, nothing to ask, nothing is needed. Coming and going.

The trees don’t get angry when the birds fly away.
The birds don’t get angry when the trees loose all their leaves or when their arms are dancing with the wind from left to right.

Love is free.

Plum Village, 2019